Yale psychologist Bloom presents a striking and thought-provoking new understanding of pleasure, desire, and value.

From the Publisher:Why is an artistic masterpiece worth millions more than a convincing forgery? Pleasure works in mysterious ways, as Paul Bloom reveals in this investigation of what we desire and why. Drawing on a wealth of surprising studies, Bloom investigates pleasures noble and seamy, lofty and mundane, to reveal that our enjoyment of a given thing is determined not by what we can see and touch but by our beliefs about that thing's history, origin, and deeper nature.

Praise

"Bloom...has written a book that is different from the slew already out there on the general subject of happiness. No advice here about how to become happier by organizing your closets; Bloom is after something deeper than the mere stuff of feeling good. He analyzes how our minds have evolved certain cognitive tricks that help us negotiate the physical and social world--and how those tricks lead us to derive pleasure in some rather unexpected places." - Robin Marantz Henig 06/27/2010

"[E]ngaging, evocative....Bloom...is a supple, clear writer, and his parade of counterintuitive claims about pleasure is beguiling, if a bit indebted to the Gladwellianism of contemporary nonfiction. He quotes studies that yield even more startling results in various contexts." - Michael Washburn 07/02/2010